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State seeks residency limits for sex offenders
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TRENTON — The state Assembly Judiciary Committee will discuss four bills related to sex offender residency restrictions today, one month after the state Supreme Court upheld G.H. v. Galloway Township and Cherry Hill v. Barclay and Finguerra, decisions legislators said they wanted before moving forward with the measures.
The ruling supported lower courts’ decrees that municipalities cannot limit where sex offenders can live because New Jersey’s Megan’s Law already deals with that issue: It is up to law-enforcement officials to balance public safety and an offender’s rehabilitation needs when helping an offender find a place to live upon release from prison.
Megan’s Law is named for Hamilton Township, Mercer County, resident Megan Kanka, who was killed at age 7 by a convicted sex offender living in her neighborhood.
Two bills — A-285 and A-624 — would set statewide zones of at least 500 and 1,000 feet, respectively, between convicted sex offenders’ houses and places children are likely to gather. Assemblyman Brian Rumpf, R-Ocean, Burlington, Atlantic, first introduced a sex offender residency-restriction bill in 2004.
Galloway Township adopted a law in 2005 restricting where sex offenders can live out of frustration over what they felt were inexplicable delays at the state level.
About 120 other towns followed suit and ultimately had to repeal their sex offender residency laws after the state Supreme Court decision May 7. Some municipalities already had repealed them — or ceased enforcement — after Atlantic County Superior Court Judge Valerie Armstrong ruled against Galloway in January 2006.
A Tier I — or low-risk — sex offender at Richard Stockton College sued Galloway after being ordered to leave his apartment because it was too close to the campus day care center under the local law. The man had served two years of probation after being convicted at age 17 for fourth-degree sexual contact involving a 13-year-old girl.
The Cherry Hill law was challenged by middle-aged moderate-risk offenders James Barclay and Jeffrey Finguerra after the Camden County township fined them for taking too long to move from a motel near a high school.
Finguerra served three years in prison starting in 2002 for sexually assaulting a victim under the age of 13. He is now serving a yearlong jail term for failing to register with Camden police.
Barclay was convicted of first-degree aggravated sexual assault in 1985. During the next decade, he also served time for robbery, armed burglary, parole violation and two counts of credit card theft, according to the New Jersey Sex Offender Internet Registry.
A bill that would allow municipalities to determine their own boundaries also is on the committee’s agenda today, along with one that would implement a version of a law that originated in Florida known as the Jessica Lunsford Act.
The late Assemblyman Eric Munoz, R-Essex, Union, Morris, Somerset, sponsored a bill to the same effect in 2005, shortly after Florida enacted the law named for a 9-year-old girl who was kidnapped in February 2005 from her bedroom, raped and later buried alive by a neighbor who failed to re-register as a sex offender when he moved in with two women in a trailer near the girl’s home. Her killer, John Evander Couey, awaits the death penalty.
Munoz’s wife, Nancy, who has served in his stead since his death March 30, is continuing to support the bill, which would stiffen penalties for sex offenders and those who harbor them.
The committee will not discuss A-526, a bill that calls for a 2,500-foot barrier for offenders at moderate risk or high risk for re-offense, nor A-3783, which seeks to change the state’s Megan’s Law based on input from the Galloway-based Communities United for Family Safety.
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Posted in Breaking, New_jersey, Atlantic on Sunday, June 7, 2009 11:25 pm Updated: 1:14 pm.
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